


Bloodlust

by hailingstars



Series: Febuwhump [23]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Bloodlust, Dialogue Heavy, Febuwhump, Fluff, Parent Tony Stark, Peter loves animals, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-25
Updated: 2019-02-25
Packaged: 2019-11-05 06:22:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17913485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hailingstars/pseuds/hailingstars
Summary: A bat terrorizes Tony and Peter in the dead of night. Tony wants it dead. Peter isn't having it.





	Bloodlust

**Author's Note:**

> So, I realize bats probably aren't really common in NYC. When I started writing this it was a mouse, but I thought a bat would be better. Please enjoy some fluff!!

Tony woke up to screaming.

His eyes snapped open, and his next response was automatic. He swung his legs over the bed, put his feet of the floor, and shuffled away from rest and towards some unknown that was certainly the opposite. Waking up in the middle of the night to strange sounds was a common occurrence whenever Peter was staying the night.

Sometimes he had nightmares. Sometimes he was simply yelling at his homework, or into the speaker of his headset at somebody miles away who’d just blown him up in some ridiculous video game. Tony knew the chances of something actually being wrong were slim, but he felt the need to check on him each time anyway. He could be sick, or scared, or dying.

He wasn’t any of the three when Tony walked into his bedroom. He wasn’t even there. 

“Peter?” asked Tony, with a frown. 

His head popped out from under the bed. Of course. Why wouldn’t he be screaming under his bed at four in the morning?

“Oh hey, Mr. Stark,” he said. 

“Do I even want to know what you’re doing?”

“Ummm, I don’t want to freak you out,” said Peter, slowly, biting his lip. He’d done something. The kid emitted guilt.

Just as Tony was trying to piece together what kind of wrongdoing Peter had committed, a bat swooped down from the ceiling. Tony yelled out in shock, dropped to the floor, and crawled under the bed with Peter. The two of them laid on their bellies, side by side, watching the rat with wings fly around Peter’s bedroom, when the boy started giggling.

“All this time and I never knew Iron Man was afraid of bats,” said Peter, between laughs. 

“I am not afraid of it,” said Tony. “Those things are disease carriers. Do you want rabies?”

That stopped Peter’s laughing, and he went solemn.

They both watched helplessly as the bat flew out of Peter’s bedroom and into the rest of the penthouse. At least Pepper wasn’t home to witness this.

“I’m gonna kill that bat.” Tony began his army crawl out from under the bed, but before he could stand up, Peter had grabbed his leg. 

“What? Mr. Stark, no!” 

He tried to shake him off. “Pete, let go of me.”

“I can’t let you kill Buttons!”

Tony buried his face in the carpet. Only Peter would name a bat Buttons, then advocate for its right to live. He tried, and failed, to shake Peter kid off his leg, before sighing and giving up.

“If we just trap and release, it will come back in the way it came,” said Tony.

“I don’t think we have to worry about that, Mr. Stark.”

A horrifying reality dawned on Tony, and he turned to look at Peter. He was holding his leg with both hands still, wearing a face full of determination and stubbornness. 

“Did you let that thing into my penthouse?” 

His face flashed with guilt. “Well…”

“Well?” 

“The thing is, I thought she was sick, so I was going to nurse her back to health, but it turned out she was just… umm sleeping? Then she flew right at me! So I ducked under the bed…”

“I swear to god Peter as soon as we catch this bat you’re grounded.”

“…so, we’re not killing it?” 

“No.”

Peter let go of his leg, and Tony tumbled forward without his anchor. He stood and extended a helping hand to the future zoo-keeper, pulling Peter out from under the bed and to his feet. His eyes darted around restlessly, as if the bat would suddenly materialize out of nowhere and attack them. Tony couldn’t bring himself to have any sympathy for his fear. He hadn’t been so afraid of it hours earlier, when he brought that diseased, winged rodent into their home.

* 

It took Tony less than thirty minutes down in the workshop to build a cage that would attract and trap the bat. It wouldn’t have taken him that long, without Peter sitting up on his desk, swinging his feet and talking his ear off about anything and everything. Tony didn’t mind it. Hearing his excited chattering was worth the extra time, even he couldn’t understand how Peter had so much energy this early in the morning.

Tony looked up from the cage, declared it finished, just as Peter adjusted the pot he wore on his head by the handle. Somehow, when they had been making a break for it to the elevator, to get to the workshop, Peter had had enough time to dive into the kitchen and grab what he called protective head gear, in case the bat decided to swoop.

“You look ridiculous,” Tony told him, and adorable. He was waiting for Peter to get distracted so he could snap a picture.

Peter just shrugged, and grinned.

“Ready to set Buttons free?” asked Tony. Then cringed when he realized he called it by Peter’s name.

“Yeah,” said Peter. He jumped down from Tony’s desk, and followed him towards the elevator.

As soon as the elevator doors opened to the penthouse’s living room, Tony flipped a switch on the side of the cage to emit the soundwaves, and just like that, just seconds later, their rodent problem zipped straight down from the ceiling inside the cage. The lid snapped shut automatically. 

“Whoa,” said Peter. “That was easy.”

Tony glared at him. Easy for him to say. He hadn’t been awoken from a peaceful slumber in the dead of night. He stalked across the penthouse, with Peter following close behind, and stepped out onto the balcony. He flipped another switch, the door came open, and the bat took off in the New York skyline. 

“Bye Buttons!”

Tony narrowed his eyes at him again, then shoved the cage at him. He stopped on his way back in, thought better of leaving that sort of technology with Peter, and snatched it back. That could’ve been a disaster. The next night he’d probably wake up to ten bats in his home. Technology like that, with a boy like Peter around, was better off destroyed. 

Once they both made it back inside, Peter yawned, and stretched. “Well I better go to bed. I’m supposed to meet Ned earlier tomorrow- “

“Uh, no,” said Tony. “You’re grounded.”

“But- “

“You bring a diseased rodent into my home and interrupt my sleep, you deal with the consequences.” Tony began his walk to his bedroom, when his bed was calling out to him, and just like he knew he would, Peter followed with his whines.

“But Mr. Stark – “

“-I don’t wanna hear it.”

“I was just going to say,” said Peter. “I had fun tonight. You know, running from bats and building something to catch her. We should spend time together like this more often.”

“Uh huh, nice try,” said Tony, and Peter deflated. That was his opportunity. He took his phone out and snapped a picture, capturing him wearing a kitchen pot on his head, backwards, like a regular person would wear a baseball cap.

“Hey!”

He slipped his phone back into the pocket of his pajama pants with a grin. “Goodnight, Pete.”

He crossed the threshold into his bedroom, but then turned back to look at his kid. He still stood there, pot on his head, pouting in the middle of the hall. He felt sorry for him. Not sorry enough to lift the revenge-grounding for him interrupting his sleep, that was parental privilege, but he at least had enough sympathy to offer an olive branch.

“I had fun tonight, too,” he said. Peter’s face lit back up. “Next time have your animal crisis between the hours of eight and five, okay?” 

With that, Tony retreated back under his covers, told FRIDAY to shut off the lights, and planned a few projects for him and Peter to tackle the next day in the workshop as he drifted off to sleep.


End file.
